Page images
PDF
EPUB

do good, and not only to do no harm: else a stone or corpse were as good a Christian as you, for they do less harm than you. If sin have a negative voice in your religion, whether God shall be worshipped and obeyed or not, it is your king: it may shew its power as well by commanding you not to pray, and not to consider, and not to read, as in commanding you to be drunk or swear. The wicked are described by omissions :-Such as "will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts';"-such as "know not God, and call not on his name;"-that have "no truth, or mercy, or knowledge of God';"-that "feed not, clothe not, visit not" Christ in his members";-that hide their talents". Indeed, if God have not your hearts the creature hath it; and so it is omission and commission that go together in your reigning sin.

Tempt. vi. But, saith the tempter, they are but sins of ignorance, and therefore they are not reigning sins: at least you are not certain that they are sins.

Direct. vi. And, indeed, do you not know that it is a sin to love the world better than God? and fleshly pleasure better than God's service? and riches better than grace and holiness? and to do more for the body than for the soul, and for earth than for heaven? Are you uncertain whether these are sins? And do you not feel that they are your sins? You cannot pretend ignorance for these. But what causeth your ignorance? Is it because you would feign know, and cannot? Do you read, and hear, and study, and inquire, and pray for knowledge, and yet cannot know? Or is it not because you would not know, or think it not worth the pain to get it; or because you love your sin? And will such wilful ignorance as this excuse you? No; it doth make your sin the greater. It sheweth the greater dominion of sin, when it can use thee as the Philistines did Samson, put out thine eyes, and make a drudge of thee; and conquer thy reason, and make thee believe that evil is good and good is evil. Now it hath mastered the principal fortress of thy soul, when thine understanding is mastered by it. He is reconciled indeed to his enemy, who taketh him to be a friend. Do you not know, that God should have your heart, and heaven should have your chiefest care and dili¡Psal. x. 4. * Jer. x. 25. I Hos. iv. 1. m Matt. xxv.

» Matt. xxv.

gence; and that you should make the Word of God your rule, and your delight, and meditation day and night? If you know not these things, it is because you would not know them and it is a miserable case to be given up to a blinded mind! Take heed, lest at last you commit the horridest sins, and do not know them to be sins. For such there are that mock at godliness, and persecute Christians and Ministers of Christ, and know not that they do ill; but think they do God service. If a man will make himself drunk, and then kill, and steal, and abuse his neighbours, and say, I knew not that I did ill, it shall not excuse him. This is your case. You are drunken with the love of fleshly pleasure and worldly things, and these carry you so away, that you have neither heart nor time to study the Scriptures, and hear, and think what God saith to you, and then say that you did not know.

[ocr errors]

Tempt. VII. But, saith the tempter, it cannot be a mortal, reigning sin, because it is not committed with the whole heart, nor without some struggling and resistance: dost thou not feel the Spirit striving against the flesh? and so it is with the regenerate P. The good which thou dost not do, thou wouldst do; and the evil which thou dost, thou wouldst not do: so then it is no more thou that dost it, but sin that dwelleth in thee. In a sensual, unregenerate persop there is but one party, there is nothing but flesh; but thou feelest the combat between the flesh and the Spirit within thee.'

Direct. VII. This is a snare so subtle and dangerous, that you have need of eyes in your head to escape it. Understand, therefore, 1. That as to the two texts of Scripture, much abused by the tempter, they speak not at all of mortal, reigning sin, but of the unwilling infirmities of such as had subdued all such sin, and walked not after the flesh but after the Spirit; and whose wills were habitually bent to good, and fain would have been perfect, and not have been guilty of an idle thought or word, or of any imperfection in their holiest service, but lived up to all that the law requireth: but this they could not do, because the flesh did cast many stops before the will in the performance. But this is nothing to the case of one that liveth in gross sin and

• John xvi. 2.

P Gal. v. 17. Rom. vii. 20-23.

an ungodly life, and hath strivings and convictions, and ineffectual wishes to be better, and to turn, but never doth it. This is but sinning against conscience, and resisting the Spirit that would convert you; and it maketh you worthy of many stripes, as being rebellious against the importunities of grace. Sin may be resisted, where it is never conquered: it may reign nevertheless for some contradiction. Every one that resisteth the king doth not depose him from his throne. It is a dangerous deceit to think that every good desire that contradicteth sin doth conquer it, and is a sign of saving grace. It must be a desire after a state of saving grace. It must be a desire after a state of godliness, and an effectual desire too. There are degrees of power: some may have a less and limited power, and yet be rulers. As the evil spirits that possessed men's bodies were a legion in one, and but one in others, yet both were possessed; so is it here. Grace is not without resistance in a holy soul: there are some remnants of corruption in the will itself, resisting the good; and yet it followeth not, that grace doth not rule: so it is in the sin of the unregenerate. No man in this life is so good as he will be in heaven, or so bad as he will be in hell: therefore none is void of all moral good. And the least good will resist evil in its degree, as light doth darkness. As in these cases:

1. There is in the unregenerate, a remnant of natural knowledge and conscience: some discoveries of God and his will there are in his works: God hath not left himself without witness. This light and law of nature governed the heathens: and this, in its measure, resisteth sin and assisteth the conscience.

2. When supernatural, extrinsic revelation in the Scripture is added to the light and law of nature, and the ungodly have all the same law as the best, it may do more.

3. Moreover, an ungodly man may live under a most. powerful preacher, that will never let him alone in his sins, and may stir up much fear in him and many good purposes, and almost persuade him to be a true Christian; and not only to have some ineffectual wishings and strivings against sin, but to do many things after the preacher, as Herod did

4 See Acts xiv. 17. xvii. 27. Rom. i. 19, 20. ii. 7, 8, 9.

after John, and to escape the common pollutions of the world'.

4. Some sharp affliction, added to the rest, may make him seem to others a true penitent: when he is stopped in his course of sin, as Balaam was by the angel, with a drawn sword, and seeth that he cannot go on but in danger of his life; and that God is still meeting him with some cross, and hedging up his way with thorns (for such mercy he sheweth to some of the ungodly): this may not only breed resistance of sin, but some reformation. When the Babylonians were planted in Samaria they feared not God, and he sent lions among them; and then they feared him, and set up some kind of service to him, performed by a base sort of priests; "they feared the Lord, and served their own gods," thinking it was safest to please all'. Affliction maketh bad men most like to the good.

As

5. Good education and company may do very much: it may help them to much knowledge, and make them professors of strict religion; and constant companions with those that fear sin, and avoid it; and therefore they must needs go far then, as Joash did all the days of Jehoiada. plants and fruits change with the soil by transplantation, and as the climate makes some blackmoors and some white, so education and converse have so great a power on the mind that they come next to grace, and are often the means of it.

6. And God giveth to many, internally, some grace of the Spirit, which is not proper to them that are saved, but common or preparatory only. And this may make much resistance against sin, though it do not mortify it. One that should live but under the convictions that Judas had when he hanged himself, I warrant he would have strivings and combats against sin in him, though he were unsanctified.

7. Yea, the interest and power of one sin may resist another as covetousness may make much resistance against sensuality and pride of life, and pride may resist all disgraceful sin.

[ocr errors]

Tempt. VIII. But, saith the tempter, it is not unpardoned sin, because thou art sorry and dost repent for it

r 2 Pet. ii. 20.

• 2 Kings xvii. 25. 32, 33.

t 2 Chron. xxiv. 2.

when thou hast committed it: and all sin is pardoned that is repented of.'

· Direct. VIII. All the aforesaid causes which may make some resistance of sin in the ungodly, may cause also some sorrow and repenting in them. There is repenting and sorrow for sin in hell. All men repent and are sorry at last; but few repent so as to be pardoned and saved. When a sinner hath had all the sweetness out of sin that it can yield him, and seeth that it is all gone, and the sting is left behind, no marvel if he repent. I think there is scarcely any drunkard, or whoremonger, or glutton (that is not a flat infidel), but he repenteth of the sin that is past, because he hath had all out of it that it can yield him, and there is no thing left of it that is lovely: but yet he goeth on still, which sheweth that his repentance was unsound. True repentance is a thorough change of the heart and life; a turning from sin to a holy life, and such a sorrow for what is past as would not let you do it, if it were to do again. If you truly repent, you would not do so again, if you had all the same temptations.

Tempt. 1x. But, saith the tempter, it is but one sin, and the rest of thy life is good and blameless; and God judgeth by the greater part of thy life, whether the evil or the good

be most.'

Direct. Ix. If a man be a murderer, or a traitor, will you excuse him, because the rest of his life is good, and it is but one sin that he is charged with? One sort of poison may kill a man; and one stab at the heart, though all his body else be whole: you may surfeit on one dish: one leak may sink a ship. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet. offend in one point, is guilty of all"." Indeed God doth judge by the bent of thy heart, and the main drift and endeavour of thy life. But canst thou say, that the bent of thy heart, and the main endeavour of thy life is for God, and heaven, and holiness? No: if it were, thou wert regenerate; and this would not let thee live in any one beloved, chosen, wilful sin. The bent of a man's heart and life may be sinful, earthly, fleshly, though it run but in the channel of one way of gross sinning! As a man may be covetous, that hath but one trade; and a whoremonger, that hath but one whore;

" Jam. ii. 10. See Ezck. xviii, 10, 11.

« PreviousContinue »